RRC Archives

Just started my first 2 hour delay here in atlanta. The only place in america I find less inviting than ohio. Admittedly though, the airport terminal is slightly better than their bus station.

Great. I'll be there tomorrow.

by the looks of it, I will see you here

What you are experiencing is the fact that flying has now become another form of mass transit. Prior to deregulation flying was really a privilege that only a few enjoyed. Now, after, everyone and there mother has started a new low cost carrier. Everybody wants there cheap fare but wants safty, convenience ect.. as well. The system is so jammed up with trafic now that one small burp - weather, maintenance ect... jams the whole sytem up. Basically you get what you pay for. If you want convenience best bet is to charter a plane - very expensive. Will be interesting to see what happens as these VLJs (Very light jets) come on the market and offer a relativeley low cost way to charter an aircraft. Best just accept that this is the way it will be when you travel by airline untill the infrastructure catches up to the expansion - if it ever does. "If you have time to spare - travel by air"!!!!

Pru wrote: And just suck it up and check your bag.
Just fucking check it.

you wanna check my overnite bag Pru??

I'm skeptical about how many passengers VLJs will really take away from scheduled airlines. There's just no way that they can be very cheap - even with 3 or 4 passengers traveling together, they are dividing the cost of at least one pilot plus fuel, maintenance and depreciation on the jet itself. Think about helecopter costs... I'm pretty sure that they will never be competetive with a business class ticket, so they're really only competing for a tiny slice of the total trips (less than 1%?) Even so, they won't help with reducing congestion unless they are all operating out of secondary airports. Here in Chicago, we already have a business jet airport to keep them out of the queue at ORD and MDW, and we're still pretty damn congested.

I still think that high speed rail is the way out of this mess. (not that we don't need to expand the existing airports, but that will never keep up) Chicago to NY would be around 4.5 hrs. And NY to Atlanta would be about 5hrs. Not much different than flying when you consider the time to/from the airport, checking in and flying. When you add in airport delays, the train would stomp flying.

To dream the impossible dream....

They will operate out of smaller airports. Will be more expensive no doubt than riding the airlines. But, cheaper than chartering a Lear, gulfstream ect... Wont make much of a dent in airline business - just offers an alternative to those who can afford it.

Cannon. That is the next air travel: BOOM!!! and then you land in a net in Paris.

Latch knows stuff about airlines.

Yeah - I just noticed his post in the "workspaces" thread

How many commercial pilots climb? (It seems like a lot!) I guess it's the old 'controlling risk' thing.

I climbed with a pilot (Austin from Canada?) who got on a new route at In-Between (yes, this was a few years ago). He started heading up to the next bolt, realized things were not going well, and as he started trying to down climb, he fell back on instinct and yelled down to his belayer, "Abort! Abort! Abort!"